Sony’s Flagship Phone Xperia Z Launched in India, to be Available from March 12

Being surprisingly quick to release their flagship model to the subcontinent just under a month of initial launch, Sony unveiled their flagship model Xperia Z in New Delhi today. Released first in Japan just a month ago, Sony has excited a lot of Indian technology enthusiasts, unlike other key market players being ridiculously late in bringing their products to the market. Yes I am pointing at the Nexus devices, Google.

(Photo Credit: Vipul, TechSplurge)

Gorgeous Design

The Xperia Z is truly stunning in terms of design and Sony has definitely raised their bar this time around. The Xperia Z features a stellar glass unibody with metal keys and rubbery sides to prevent slipping. Despite sporting a mammoth 5 inch display, the phone seems to be easily operable with a single hand. While you might think the phone is delicate, surprisingly that is not the case. The phone is dust proof and even water proof upto the depth of a meter.

Mighty Impressive specifications

Mind you that this is the first phone being developed and released entirely by Sony after their split with Ericsson. This beast is powered by a Quad Core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 processor clocking at 1.5 GHz and has a gorgeous 5 inch full 1920×1080 HD IPS display at whopping 443 PPI which makes it one of the densest displays available on the market to say in the meekest terms.

The camera on the phone is no slouch either being a Cyber-Shot 13 Megapixel shooter with LED flash supporting 1080p video recording. Perhaps the first flagship phone being released by a major player with a 13 MP camera. Other mundane expected typical super smart phone features like spacious 2 gigabytes of RAM, NFC, Bluetooth 4.0, 4G-LTE, GPS are all onboard.

Coming to the software side, the Phone is powered by Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean with a planned upgrade to 4.2. With some decent Android updates track record, it will not be any surprise if Sony ships quite a few Android releases for the Xperia Z.

Sony apps with featured In-House content

Sony has collaborated with its group business companies to design some in house digital content focused applications as well.

Sony Music: Sony is set to give 6 months free Unlimited streaming & music download of over 15 lakh songs such as International, Bollywood & Regional songs from Sony Music library for Xperia Z users.

Sony LIV: Sony will also have a video streaming app called Sony Liv featuring TV content from it’s own channels, SAB, Sony Entertainment and Max.

Sony has tied-up with Vodafone to offer 8 GB free data download for the first two months of product purchase.

Pricing

Perhaps Sony learnt quite a lot of lessons after witnessing the Internet rage mocking the BlackBerry Z10 priced at a ludicrous Rs 43,490 which was launched recently as well. The phone is priced at Rs 38,990 which is quite decent factoring in the gradual fall of prices after launch. The other flagship models in the Indian sub continent are noticeably expensive than Xperia Z giving Sony a slight edge in the packed competition.

The Sony Xperia Z comes in white, black and purple colour. It will be available across National retail chain stores, Sony Center brand shops, muliti-brand outlets and distributors across India from 12th March onwards.

Also Announced : Xperia Z Tablet

In addition to Xperia Z Smartphone, the Xperia Tablet Z was announced. The tablet Z will be available by May, ’13 in India. The Tablet Z features 10.1 Full HD 1920 * 1200 display at 224 PPI. This is also one of the first commercial LTE tablets. Other specs include 2 GB RAM, 16 GB internal storage, Snap Dragon S4 Quad Core processor, 8.1 MP Camera and Stereo speakers . On the software side, the tablet is powered by Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean with Sony mobile Bravia Engine 2.

Concluding

Clearly Sony is blazing all its guns to gain a bigger chunk of Indian Smartphone market, with early product launches and increased budget for India overall. The question is will the Indian consumer accept Sony with the same enthusiasm as it was seen with some late Micromax devices. Despite increasing presence of flagship phones by traditional manufacturers in the market, moderate to low priced but feature packed devices by local manufacturers like Lava and Micromax have been capturing market successfully. With all this in consideration the question is will Sony succeed in it’s goal of tripling it’s market share by end of 2013? Only time will tell!